“Does life have meaning” is an nonsense question. You can choose to attach meaning to your actions and your environment. Anecdotally, doing so is very rewarding

“Does life have meaning” is an nonsense question. You can choose to attach meaning to your actions and your environment. Anecdotally, doing so is very rewarding. You could say the very definition of “rewarding” demands that meaning of some kind exist, so to have a rewarding life you have to make some kind of value structure and then stick to it. Religious people are actually very good at this and can be learned from. For example I’ve learned about all the plants in my area and now taking a walk is very rich in meaning. How are the birches doing this year? Which roses bloom first? When will the fig tree on 23rd and main be ripe? These are only interesting questions to someone who values plant life. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a book that outlines how “quality” and “caring” are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have anything of quality including your existence unless you care about it. A Maserati is just another car if you don’t know how to drive. Wrt/ work, having a “meaningless” job is one in which your actions aren’t tied to any of your value structures. Maybe the answer is to make more values. But jobs today seem more disconnected, remote, isolated, fungible, and temporary than in the recent past. This is likely to make us as a culture more anxious, closed off, cynical, and defeated. And that is a tragedy.